


To… Not (Moment’s Peace)

by LeoOtherLands



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Author Is Sleep Deprived, Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff, Gen, Good night, I'm Bad At Fluff, I'm Bad At Tagging, M/M, Rest, Sort Of, Uneasy Allies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-02-23 02:21:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23870800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeoOtherLands/pseuds/LeoOtherLands
Summary: And then he was speaking, inquiring the unexpected. “Do you ever just want to… not?”
Relationships: Evan MacMillan | The Trapper/Quentin Smith
Comments: 12
Kudos: 48





	To… Not (Moment’s Peace)

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly, I have very little knowledge of this fandom and I am not even sure if I've played this game because I have the memory of a gold fish that has dumped its head into the glass side of the fish tank a few too many times... I'm basically a fan of a fan's work, who is now writing fan fiction... "shrug" What can I say, I have zero fear of writing for a fandom I know little about and absolutely no shame!
> 
> Secondly, this was really fun to write and this fandom really intrigues me. I hope you all enjoy this as much as I did writing it.

**The Killer**

Discordia

The girl’s blood on my hands aggravated me maddeningly. It shouldn’t. I couldn’t recall her name out of the mix of survivors, but I knew her face. I’d killed her more than a dozen times over and seen her escape down the hatch a time of two, as well. We were well acquainted. She was a survivor, a prey animal set loose in my area for me to hunt and kill. I felt no remorse for having sent her back to the campfire and her final, pained-resigned cry on the hook should not have lingered with me, as I fretted with her drying and flaking blood clinging to my fingers.

But there was something wrong in this trial, something out of harmony with the usual flow and rhythm of the Entity’s game. On the surface, it was all normal, all the same pattern, the prey being delivered to my area of control, at first working together in the hopes of staying alive, then panicking and separating, when they started to die. The same repeated formation of a hundred other trials. This could be any of a multitude of other occurrences, with different faces thrown in for paltry variety. The Entity’s game went on, unchanging and endless, and this was no different, but I felt disquieted. Uneasy with the killing of the prey.

Maybe it had something to do with the new one, Krueger’s little pet. I’d hunted him numerous times, since he’d been brought into the Entity. Learned him and his ways, until his uniqueness had worn off. Come to understand the boy lacked a sense of self-preservation and could be an easy kill because of it. Or the most difficult thorn in a man’s side. But, in either case, uninteresting after a few cycles of the same.

This time he’d started out in his usual. Throwing himself in front of his companions, trying to keep them alive, failing. True, many times his carelessness would have had him dead long before, but not in this instance. This trial, Quentin Smith was the last survivor in my realm. And as such, uninjured as he was, he should be running or struggling. He should be trying to find a way to the hatch or attempting to determine where I was on the map. But Quentin was doing none of those things.

Since the death of his last friend, Quentin had ceased doing anything. He’d just… stopped. And that was unsettling.

At first I’d thought he was planning something. I’d taken my time tracking him, circling his location, telling myself I wasn’t just dragging out the inevitable for the sake of it. But all of that had come to a halt when I’d come in sight of Quentin Smith. The boy wasn’t doing anything, and if he was planning something untoward, he’d chosen the most unorthodox position for it. Laying out in the open, on his back, with an aid kit under his head. Just… seemingly, _being_. Not looking around, not tense, not listening for my approach. Only watching the sky of the Entity’s creation with his chin tilted back and his cheeks wet, as if the answers to it all were written up there for the reading.

He was a sight, and it stopped me. I could have killed him uncounted ways, brutalized him, and hung him on a hook for the Entity to send back to the campfire, but I only stood there. Studying this unnerving boy.

What was he doing? So blatantly ignoring the rules of the trial, what did he hope to accomplish? Or did he merely want to die? Seeing no means of getting out on his own, was he only attempting to forgo the futility of struggle? Waiting for me to find him.

The shear serenity of him seemed to belie that notion. The boy wasn’t waiting for anything. He was just _there_. Like the grass or the stones. Existent.

So, I just stood there, locked in confusion, until the time stretched taunt and I stepped out, just to break it.

Quentin didn’t flinch, didn’t twitch, and I had to wonder how long he’d known I was there, understood death within shouting distance. Still, he didn’t move or react, until I was standing over him. Blocking out his view of that written sky. Then his eyes settled on mine, the way they would never settle on a killer’s, in a way I hadn’t been looked at since long before the Entity had found me. He wasn’t afraid or angry or disgusted by me. It was like he was just seeing me. Looking at me as if I was real and nothing more. Not the hunter that stalked him, not the killer who’d seen to his end and reset more times than we remembered properly.

And then he was speaking, inquiring the unexpected. “Do you ever just want to… not?”

Despite the vulgarity of it, I understood the question, grasped what he was asking. Did I ever just want to not play the Entity’s game. Did I ever grow tired of it all. The repetition and inevitability. Hunting the same prey, who would only respawn at the campfire, to be hunted again without end or change some other day, some other trial. Did I ever just want to stop, to defeat the eternal rotation, if even simply for a moment.

I moved my fingers and the girl’s blood cracked, irritated. I knew he saw it all up my arms and over my chest, but he showed no revulsion, any more than he had shown aversion to my approach. The calmness of him was not that of prey. Here was a man who had given up the task of being hunted, who’d elected to not. Here was Quentin Smith, outside the game and any thought of Krueger, his continual tormentor. Here was something, someone, wholly unknown and unanticipated.

And I sat down by him.

† † †

**The Survivor**

Melancholia

The trial could have been any other on the Trapper’s territory. It didn’t really matter. All trials were innately the same. Try not to die, keep everyone else alive, so they could get to the hatch, even if that conflicted with trying not to die. I’d been doing all that without thinking of it, without thinking of much of anything, until people started dying.

Like I so often did, I tried putting myself between them and the killer, tried keeping the Trapper’s attention on me and taking the brunt of the traps. But somehow, where I would normally get torn up or stuck on the hook, I passed uninjured and uncaught, while everyone else ended up dead and sent back to the campfire.

Meg had been the last one. The resigned quality of her final outcry on the hook had dropped a dead weight on my chest. Exactly, how many times was this going to keep happening? How long was the Entity intending to keep watching us die and be reformed? When was enough going to be enough? What did the Entity even want? What was the point of the trials and the killing and the pain? Was it merely for the sake of the blood and death?

Standing there, the last one in the trial, I wondered what would happen to the Entity’s game if we all just stopped. Killer, survivors, if we all just stopped playing, what would happen?

Probably nothing. Probably we couldn’t even do it. And if we could, if we could convince the killers to leave off enacting the Entity’s will, would it just lead to our eradication? Would the Entity just scrap us all and start over? Just find new killers and other survivors, and restart everything? No one would ever know because it would never happen, but…

But, for that moment, I realized I wanted to stop. Wanted to say no more, not right now. They were all dead. Somehow, I’d lost them all and was still alive. And, alone, what was the point? One way or another, I was going to be back at the campfire soon, and if that was so, if that was my only and ultimate end in any case, I wanted a rest. I was done. I wanted to stop.

So, I did. I just stopped.

Laying there, crying softly, while the Trapper did whatever he felt he needed to do, was oddly peaceful. There was nothing to see, no explanation for all this etched in the false heavens, and nothing to be concerned about. I wasn’t even really waiting for the Trapper. Expecting him, yes, but not anticipating him. Not thinking of him. And maybe that confused him. Perhaps my utter need to just be, to hold a moment and exist in it, disoriented the man because he lingered off at the periphery of my vision for some time before smoothly coming toward me and putting himself between me and the unreal sky.

I should have been afraid, should have at least felt some desire to avoid the coming, unavoidable pain that was to be mine, but I wasn’t and I didn’t. I was serenely at a remove when I let myself take the Trapper in, let myself see him as I would any of the other survivors, as a person, solid and real and not frightful.

And, looking at him like that, noting he wasn’t outright killing me, I found myself asking the thing filling me, “Do you ever just want to… not?”

I wasn’t sure what I was going to say, until it was out, and then I wasn’t sure what I expected in return. A quick death, a response, a lot of pain. Certainly not how long the Trapper considered me before simply sitting next to me.

He didn’t say anything and neither did I. In a weirdly surreal moment, we were existing together and that was all. For an infinity of seconds, we weren’t killer and survivor, we just were.

Lacking all anxiety and free from the possibility of Krueger sneaking into my dreams, while in the middle of a trial, I found myself drifting, dozing. Just twitching lightly under the Trapper’s watchful and curious eyes. Even half aware, I knew this was an exception. This was a moment’s peace, only. Not to be repeated again for any reason. The next trial I met the Trapper in his realm, he would kill me. Or I would find the hatch and avoid one death among many. But this once, this one inexplicable time, we stepped outside the game and just didn’t.

Time stretched on, until we both felt it, the pressure of lagging instants, mounting one on top of another. Whatever we had done was going dead between us. We might have stopped playing, but the game wasn’t over and it carried us on to the unavoidable end.

My gaze shifted to his. “Don’t look,” he said, reaching for a knife I’d never seen him use before, and covering my eyes with a hand, the way you would a child, and that was… was…

**Author's Note:**

> This salty ball of angst and glitter is an original fiction author and fan fiction writer, who literally lives for comments and reader interaction. Even if this is nothing but inarticulate vowel screams, lol. He exist on a flotilla of social media, separated into a wide array writery things.
> 
> If you are crazy enough to want to see what I'm writing on any given day, and maybe try tempting me into writing something specific, feel free to join me in my personal writing Discord [Midway](https://discord.gg/jsQw96p), or friend me on Discord at LeoOtherland#7066 if you would rather chat one on one.
> 
> On Facebook I can be located on my [author page](https://www.facebook.com/LeoOtherland/) for all things original fiction, or in the [AO3 Armada group](https://www.facebook.com/groups/601270063618951) for all things fan fiction.
> 
> On [Twitter](https://twitter.com/RoseOfOtherLand) or [Tumbler](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/leootherlands) I primarily run with the fan fiction crowd and I seldom post and/or tweet anything, but if you want to drop me a line, I am always up for a chat.


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